


Troupe of Remarkable Trained Pigs

by baehj2915



Series: Shaw's Traveling Circus of Extra-ordinaries [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe - Circus, Charles the prognosticator, Emotionally Crippled Erik Is Fun To Read, Erik the knifethrower, Introspection, M/M, Mutant Rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baehj2915/pseuds/baehj2915
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It felt like Erik’s stomach dropped to the bottom of his legs. It was sick-making. Erik was so confused. Six days really wasn’t much time. Before Charles he could go weeks, and much more for most people, without saying more than two words to anyone. Now the very idea of Charles enjoying his absence made Erik feel weak.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Erik's many insecurities are not even half way explored and we try to make a man who hates learn to lov--not hate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Troupe of Remarkable Trained Pigs

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely read part one first.

Charles fiddled with the little iron rings, twisting and clanking them with half his typical enthusiasm. The puzzle was a set of interlocking rings weaved through two bars. It was one Erik had made years ago to alleviate boredom before it had become a hobby. Charles had thus far shown a keen interest in Erik’s little trinkets, but that evening threw himself on Erik’s bed with determined drama, obviously upset but not talking about it. He’d been fiddling quietly with the puzzle ever since.

Erik was content let him. Unlike Charles, he didn’t need to pry into every detail of everyone’s lives. He continued dutifully sharpening his show knives. 

The only problem was the distraction. 

Charles was reclined on his bed in a pose annoyingly prone. Underdressed from the heat in a thin undershirt and too-big trousers. He wasn’t even wearing suspenders properly, letting them hang to his thighs pointlessly. He was lying on his belly and Erik’s eyes fell constantly to the low dip of his back where he sunk into the bedroll. 

The burn of candlelight made his skin glow. 

Erik wanted to climb on top of him, wanted pull those trousers off. He knew it wouldn’t take more than a sharp tug, hanging as they were off Charles’ hips. He wanted to rut between Charles’ thighs and flood the tender cleavage of his legs and buttocks with come. He wanted to push his way inside Charles and fuck him like a cheap rent boy. 

Charles’ neck and shoulders tensed. He didn’t look towards Erik, acknowledging the thought and that he’d overheard it, but a red blush darkened his cheek. 

Erik averted his eyes and attended to readjusting a knife he’d warped in his carelessness. _Don’t touch that_ a long gone voice rang in his head. _You’ll break it._

Their relationship was strange. Something cobbled together out of a respect Erik hadn’t afforded anyone else in a long time and lust they neither embraced nor rejected. That move Erik had made in the washroom had the very unintended result of Charles issuing his own strange brand of ultimatums and conditions. Not ultimatums to Charles’ own benefit—at least not in a way Erik could see—but to get Erik to reveal himself. 

To puzzlingly get Erik to reveal things that Charles himself could root out with little effort. Not to extort or expose Erik—how could he when all Charles really wanted to know was tidbits about Erik’s mother and how to make chain puzzles—but to _understand_ Erik. 

He didn’t really see what there was to understand and he’d never met anyone so utterly bizarre. 

The reward for Erik’s stories was Charles’ conversation, whatever similar revelations the precocious young man had to offer, and kissing. 

Charles kissed not like a child, but with the blithe freedom of a child. As though what he was giving Erik was as normal and inconsequential as kind smile or a pat on the back. Sometimes at the end of their very long evenings, in the wee hours of morning before daylight, they would neck like overeager youths with their parents in the next room. Though the kissing was becoming less and less payment or motivation but an event on its own, always surprising no matter the frequency. 

The entire deal struck Erik as unmitigatedly arrogant on Charles’ behalf. Why would Erik even want to perform like a show pony for Charles’ affection and Charles’ favor, except for all the ways he did exactly that? 

Charles cleared his throat. “I had a fight with Raven. That’s why I’m here, I suppose. I shouldn’t barge in all the time. It’s your room.” 

Erik didn’t look up, pressing the blade of his knife straight, only furthering the damage. He wasn’t concentrating. He’d have to scrap it and start over. “I don’t mind,” Erik muttered. “What did you fight about?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Charles toss the puzzle aside and roll over on his back in Erik’s bed. 

“Nothing. Well, lots of things, really. But mostly that man.” 

Erik grinned. Everyone knew Raven and Azazel were hanging around each other. It was hard not to notice two people of their respective hues joined at the hip. 

“He’s helping her on the tight rope.” 

The feel of Charles’ glare on the side of his face was so intense he had to see. He looked affronted in a frightfully restrained way. It was the look of a scolding old dowager on Charles’ cherubic face. Erik couldn’t help but laugh. 

Charles shook his head. “He’s a great deal older than her. And I haven’t really read his mind but I have picked up a few things that definitely aren’t ducky. I know he has a criminal past, at the very least.” 

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Charles.”

“Hypocrite! I—“

“Everyone here’s done something on the wrong side of the law, I’d wager. Including you and your sis. A man’s gotta make a living.” 

Charles looked like he was going to object, but just pouted instead. 

“Or did you think you’d find more debutants here?” 

“I do understand what choices necessity can make,” Charles said with a roll of his eyes. “I just… I don’t like the idea of her gallivanting around with a disreputable older man.”

A twinge of guilt attacked Erik. It felt like such a real, creeping irritation that Erik shook it out of his shoulder, like a horse shaking off flies. Whether Charles thought about it like that or not, Erik was also a disreputable older man with unwholesome intentions for an unsullied young frill. 

Erik grunted, more an acknowledgement that he heard Charles than agreement. 

“Do you want me to leave?” 

It was a mistake to look at him. Charles had eyes that could regard Erik wholly, that could see into his heart. The awful part was that Erik couldn’t tell if that was if Charles was reading his mind or not. For all the cheer and good humor Charles normally had, his gaze could turn terribly intense at apace. 

The typical glint in his light blue eyes was dark and armored. It was such a stern contrast to the alabaster hue of his skin. 

“Maybe you should.” 

Charles frowned. “Will you at least tell me what’s wrong? Why are you angry with me?” 

He wasn’t so much as angry with Charles as he was angry that Charles existed. That Charles spread himself out like bait on Erik’s bed cavalierly. That the most dogged determination Charles showed was in trying to befriend Erik. That the scent of spoiled little rich boy was still dripping off him like a cloying perfume. But Erik supposed that Charles couldn’t tell the difference was an indication that he was at least trying not to read Erik’s mind. 

“Not everything’s about you, you know. Maybe I just want some time back to myself again.” 

Erik expected a hurt look that would make him feel like he was kicking a wounded dog, but Charles was rarely as predictable as he wanted. A terse mien settled into Charles features. He was exuding the kind of silence that promised a very stormy break later on. 

“Very well,” Charles said coldly and left. 

A sigh came out of Erik like a punch. Every time Charles left he got to breathe again. He hated it. Ever since the very first moment Erik had seen Charles—which had been long before that oh-so-proper introduction in the bath—something about the boy had wormed its way into Erik’s guts. 

Erik had been aware of Charles since his arrival at Shaw’s circus. 

It was the end of spring in New Jersey. Erik thought it was in the morning, or maybe it was just the way the light fell made it feel like morning. Shaw was taking two new kids through the rigamarole—introducing them to the hands, telling them procedure, giving them a line. They were young, fresh-faced and good-looking, but frazzled and dressed in clothes they obviously didn’t pick for themselves, untailored and barely presentable. Probably runaways from the city. Stopping at the circus on their last rung down the ladder to slinging up in some shantytown or turning tricks for nickels. 

Rumors started swinging about them since they stepped into Shaw’s trailer. The kids were good-looking, like silver screen starlets, too good-looking and fresh-faced to be anything but kids. Someone overhead they were from some Connecticut or Manhattan or some place with money. Someone said they were brother and sister. Someone else said they were lovers pretending to be siblings. 

Azazel kept telling him the rumors for reasons he wouldn’t realize until weeks later. So Erik was actively trying to avoid the jawing when he saw them, when he saw Charles.

Erik hadn’t been anywhere near him, just saw him through an unaccountable stillness of industry as the din of the camp’s preparation was supposed to roar. The light flittered across him, as though through a bough of leaves and Erik could not seem to determine its source. His was a pale sort of pinkish cream color that shone from that unfound light. Despite that he had thick, dark hair. He looked pained, upset by what he saw, while the girl in his company looked enchanted by the rough-and-tumble surroundings. 

But he turned, somehow meeting Erik’s gaze across the distance, and did something strange. 

He smiled. 

The boy looked directly at Erik. The restrained frown on his lips warmed into a smile, like he found an acquaintance, a friendly face in a crowd. Erik felt trapped in the direct glint of his eyes, where the sun was reflected. 

A quick, heady pulse of want struck Erik. With it came the reminder he’d heard his entire childhood whenever he wanted something above his place: _Don’t touch that._ His mother was a maid when they moved to the States. She had refused to leave Erik alone at home, so Erik wandered behind Edie’s skirts with wealthy matrons and household staff snapping at him any time he reached for anything. _Don’t touch that. You’ll break it._

The past was a trap for Erik. An avalanche of guilt that tumbled from one disaster to the next. 

There was nothing particularly similar about them, not in looks, and he didn’t know the boy from Adam, but he couldn’t help but feel a scorching reminder of Magda. A reminder that there didn’t seem to be a limit to what Erik could break. 

So he put it out of his head. 

Erik was content, well as content as Erik ever was, to keep out of their way, ignoring them like he ignored everyone else. If he wound up catching sight of the boy’s blue eyes every so often, or listening to the noise people said about his formerly rich parents, or walking the direction of his tent some evenings, it was purely coincidence. 

At least until the boy had talked to him. 

Erik was immediately annoyed enough by Charles’ tone to make a play for him. It wasn’t something he advertised, but the issue of buggery in the circus retinue never seemed to be much of an issue—full of outcasts, drunks, wash-up actors, and the desperate as it was. So long as it didn’t attract too much attention from the rubes and lawmen, prostitution and fornication of all sorts were treated with a blind eye. Charles had watched Erik disrobe and blushed, while trying to steal another peek. So Erik decided Charles was queer, or at least queer enough, for a fling. Then Erik’s looking-at-Charles-across-great-distances-for-no-reason could be put to bed. 

Then of course rather than agree to a hushed tumble in the dark, Charles had to challenge him. 

Which is what led to the sad state of Erik’s affairs tangled up in a confusing mutant boy who had no real experience in the world and kept coming to his tent for damned _chats_ in between pawing sessions. 

Which is what led to Erik standing alone in the middle of his tent, caring that he was alone, knowing it could be otherwise. Considering Erik had escaped to the dregs of society for precisely that reason, the cold irony was not lost on him. 

 

Despite his better angels, Erik did not speak to Charles again nearly a week. That made sense, really. Erik was already beginning to suspect that his better angels resided with Charles. He was surprised by how good Charles was at avoiding him. The caravan train in that time had finally entered Indiana and Erik had seen him not once in the bustle. 

After the first day of shows, and about an hour alone with a bottle of hooch, Erik finally searched out Charles’ tent, surprised to find he was not alone. 

When the discomfort of seeing mysterious blonde woman dressed only in a thin cotton slip in Charles’ tent became almost unbearable, her skin blurred and seemed to move on its own. She slid into the much more familiar blue-skinned and hawk-eyed Raven. 

She didn’t look to be pleased by the intrusion. 

“Erik,” Charles said in surprise, pulling a towel off his face. He was obviously just getting cleaned up from his act. He was wearing his costume trousers—baggy shiny blue things that were supposed to look oriental, tightly cuffed around the ankles—and nothing else. 

Raven looked on Erik with suspicion, but grabbed a silky bathrobe from her cot and made for the door. 

“Raven,” Charles started to no effect. 

“I’ll just leave you two to it.” 

It being awkward silence, apparently. 

In the cyclone of things Erik wanted to say, he found himself unprepared for what did come out first. 

“You’re more stubborn than I thought.” 

Charles scowled delicately. “You wanted to be left alone.” 

“No. I didn’t. And I think you knew that, but did it anyway to spite me.”

“You told me to leave. It doesn’t matter if you were thinking otherwise. I was just trying to respect your wishes.” 

“By not talking to me for six days?”

“What’s six days? Not much.” 

Erik’s head felt tight, like there was too much metal drawing his attention. “Not seeing me for a week didn’t bother you at all then.” 

That steel-plated look came over his eyes again, and Erik, fool that he was, found him all the more attractive for it. In the dark of the tent Charles even looked a little fearsome. Little and pale, but chalk full of firmness of purpose. 

“What if I told you it didn’t?” 

It felt like Erik’s stomach dropped to the bottom of his legs. It was sick-making. Erik was so confused. It really wasn’t much time. Before Charles he could go weeks, and much more for most people, without saying more than two words to anyone. Now the very idea of Charles enjoying his absence made Erik feel weak. 

“Oh, hang it all, Erik,” Charles spat. “Why can’t you lay off all this posturing and simply tell me what’s wrong? Of course I missed you. I had to stop myself from going to talk to you every ten minutes.”

There was a creak of wood and Erik realized he’d been gripping the back of a chair with all his might. 

“Then why didn’t you talk to me?”

“I couldn’t. You run so hot and cold. Whenever we spend time together you… you put out relief when I arrive, but after that you just seem angry with me. I had to know if you really wanted me gone.” Charles finally started to look sheepish, crossing his arms around his middle. “Besides, the temptation to read your mind, to really explore you, is so strong when you’re like that. I thought time away would do me good.” 

“Did it?” 

Charles huffed. “Not a lick. I can’t concentrate and I’ve had a bloody headache since yesterday morning.” After a beat, he added, “Why didn’t you come talk to me?” 

“I don’t know. But I’ve come now.” 

Without speaking, Charles nodded and took Erik by the hand and sat him in the chair he’d been gripping. He unlaced and removed Erik’s boots, loosened the tunic Erik wore during his shows, and set about getting a bowl and shaving kit ready. It confused him a little. He couldn’t think of any reason why Charles would want to give him a shave until he saw a flash of his face in the mirror when Charles brought it out. 

His hair was unkempt. His normal moustache was over grown and surrounded by a patchy week’s growth of ginger beard. He hadn’t even thought about shaving for that week. 

While Charles was whisking the shaving cream together in a teacup, Erik said, “Why are you doing this?” 

Charles shrugged, ignoring him by humming pleasantly about his task.

The shave was relaxing. Charles trimmed his hair with a shears, raking his fingers against Erik’s scalp intermittently. He massaged shaving cream over Erik’s jaw. The water he kept in his tent wasn’t warm so the shave wasn’t the closest but Charles was excessively careful with the strokes of his razor. He carefully wiped clean Erik’s face and pushed his hair back. It soon became clear that Charles was standing over Erik, brushing his fingers over Erik’s face for no other reason than to look and touch. 

Erik reached up and took Charles’ hands into his and held them close to his chest. 

“You didn’t need to do that. Thank you.” 

Charles shrugged again, but it was a reach for nonchalance that fell short. Charles’ hands were cold and he looked nervous. 

“I like taking care of you. Or I thought I might, so I wanted to try.” 

It struck Erik again how young Charles was. There really wasn’t that great of an age gap between them, but Charles at twenty was much less exposed to the barbarity of the world than Erik had been at even fifteen. Now Erik was at twenty-five a widower with no living family and no respectable job and no real place of residence. He would count the lack of money, but he never had much, even before the Crash. Erik had already lived a hard life long before the Crash or the circus. 

He squeezed Charles’ hand. 

“I don’t… Not even Magda, my wife, she didn’t…”

Charles worked his hands away, settled on Erik’s lap, and stroked the side of his face. “You don’t have to say anything now. If it’s too hard, I understand.” 

Charles had known about the wife and that she was dead, but not her name. Not the details. 

Erik did want to tell him everything. About his barely remembered years in Poland and Germany, his mother’s dresses she stitched for the women in the village, and his father’s stories. About his childhood in New York and how he could lean his head out the window at night to hear a dozen languages and feel a million steel beams reaching into the sky. He wanted Charles to know about Magda, who he married at eighteen because he felt that having a family was important but not because he wanted one. About how he loved Magda like a friend, but not the way a husband should love a wife. He wanted to tell Charles about working in the steel mills in Pennsylvania. About how he got into organizing for workers’ rights. 

About how he got so good at organizing he shut down production by getting a thousand Milton mill workers to impose a general strike. The plant was all but shut down for nearly a month, one of the longest strikes in the state’s history. Erik himself drove out two counties away for medicine and supplies for wounded strikers and sick children because most services in the county had been closed to them. There wasn’t a striker who didn’t find inspiration in Erik’s speeches. 

He needed to tell Charles about how, in retaliation, hired thugs set fire to his home, with his wife and newborn daughter inside, to send a message.

He really did want to tell Charles everything, but Charles was right. It was too hard. The words caught in his throat like a moth thrashing away for escape but finding none. 

“I only… I want to try to be with you. But I don’t want to—“ _break you, ruin everything_ “I can’t be—“

Charles’ hands and Charles’ voice were very close on him, too close for sight, whispering light.

“You won’t be alone anymore. I promise.”

Somehow, Erik wound up on Charles’ bed. Obviously Charles led him, shepherded him with his soft hands. Charles stripped him to his under clothes and put a pillow under his head. They settled under a blanket and clung to each other tighter than sardines on Charles’ tiny cot. 

At some point Charles had changed into a soft shirt and boxer shirts, and turned out all the lights, but Erik couldn’t have remembered it. It was all an unbelievable haze. He laid on the bedroll with Charles tucked up warm against him for hours, minutes, half asleep, half dreaming, wondering what was a dream, and staring into the darkness. He could feel Charles’ quiet breaths against his neck more than hear them, which made him feel safe. That seemed more tangible. It seemed more likely that Charles would still be there in the light of day if Erik could feel him. 

Charles couldn’t let go, couldn’t move from where Erik could feel him. 

He heard a hushing sound. _I won’t. I won’t go. You can feel me._ A hand moved firmly up his side. 

Erik couldn’t tell if that was Charles’ speaking voice or his telepathic voice, but didn’t care. 

“Let me hold you.”

 _You’re holding me._ The breathing on his neck slowly turned into kissing. Charles left a trail up Erik’s neck and jaw and found his mouth, with blind groping fingers and blind searching lips, in the darkness. _Hold me tighter._

Erik did, pulling Charles up and rolling from his side to his back, nearly toppling the cot, so he could hold Charles to him with both arms. So he could squeeze until every inch of them was tight against the other. And when Charles shivered, Erik could feel every tiny spasm as though it were coursing through his muscle. 

They rutted against each other, plucked at each other’s clothes, gave kisses haphazardly, and ground together some more. Erik took Charles’ cock into hand as they gave way to another breath-stealing kiss, like they were searching inside each other for more and more.

_Can we make love like this? Exactly like this._

Erik didn’t know if Charles was asking permission or asking for what was possible, but that didn’t matter. They used whatever saliva and leaking drops of come they could manage to fuck into each other’s hands. It was all straining muscle and earnest tremors of honesty. It was all the physical mess of just sharing pleasure with someone, of coming with someone. 

As Charles’ forehead pushed against his collarbone and Charles’ climaxing breaths assailed his ears, Erik wondered if that was not being alone felt like. 

 

Morning light was coming in from the seams of the tent. The night may have gotten cold enough where the both of them piled under a blanket, fucking under a blanket, was comfortable, but Erik could already feel the heat of morning approaching. Charles was completely unaware, wrapped around Erik with his nose stuck in the side of Erik’s neck. 

Charles’ hair tickled against his nose. 

The clean up job the night before had been extremely dubious and even moving slightly he could feel the pull of pubic hairs stuck together. The arm that Charles was sleeping on was starting to dully throb with needle-like pricking. And more than anything, Erik wanted to get up and go wash.

Most pressing of all his thoughts though, Erik was surprised to find how pleased he felt.

Because nothing had really changed. 

The story of Erik’s life was still littered with failures and disasters. The forces of good had not arisen triumphant overnight. Everyone was still poor. Mutants were nothing but a neglected fear in the periphery of the world. Injustice was afoot. Strikebreakers, hatemongers, lynchers, and greedy industrialists still proliferated the world like cockroaches. 

Having Charles—not even that, the possibility of having Charles—hadn’t changed the world’s ills or Erik’s grim expectations of the world’s ills. But having Charles next to him did make suffering them seem much more endurable. Part of Erik was sure that he and Charles could make anything possible. 

Erik wondered if this happiness was the temporary euphoria of sex. The satisfaction of being able to have sex with a man—or be with a man he enjoyed for more than only sex. The thought dimmed his outlook slightly, but there was a struggling hope in some hidden corner of his mind still that said it was because with Charles was finally where he wanted to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm playing this series by ear. Because there is more I want to go into. I keep trying to get around to more Raven stuff, but it just hasn't fit into the way I've written the first two. But I also have quotas I'm trying to reach for my own original fiction. And I have to get back to writing my contribution for XMBB. 
> 
> So the updates for this will not be swift nor profuse. 
> 
> Still, I hope you like it and stay tuned. Thank you!
> 
> Now, it is actually 4am and I'm going to sleep for 15 billion hours. :D


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